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Sunday, August 2, 2015

Find-it apps for social good ideas

Now that I've built a beta, publish ready "find-it" app that uses an API call to Google Maps, I'm challenging myself to decide if using it solely as a local food restaurant locator is really all I want it to do. Digging around, I found 2 "find-it" ideas I kinda like better; one suggestion is to be more specific in how you identify a location for Google Maps to return, as in what restaurants have table heights that work for folks in wheelchairs, or what sidewalks in your area have wheelchair ramps? In this case, you'd need to do some old-fashioned research, get out there and measure/document then hard code your API location search text more specifically (make it more granular) within your program. In my case, rather than add text "The Local" as a restaurant that serves food locally grown, I'd go to the restaurant itself armed with a measuring tape to determine their counter and table height to see if I felt any of my wheelchair-abled friends could comfortably sit with me at eye-level before I decided this search programming met my newly defined app criteria. Take a look here for some projects that take on basic "find-it" app capabilities for differently-abled folks and bike commuters.


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sepinventors@gmail.com

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Charlottesville, VA, United States
I'm a freelance ed tech consultant involved with learning labs throughout the Charlottesville area. M.Ed with 10+ yrs programming experience in private industry, loving reconnecting to the fun teaching animation programming.